Depression (Part 2)

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the

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Apostle Paul said, But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

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In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

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By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her

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King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome back to No Compromise Radio, a ministry.

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This is Mike Abendroth, and I'm your host. We're talking today about a topic that many people struggle with, and that topic is depression.

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We dealt with that last week, and now we're going to do that for part two this week, today. Before I talk about that, though,

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I want to make sure I promote an upcoming conference. Great price, great speaker, great message, great venue.

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How about that? Is that the name of the conference? No. The conference is called Manning Up, M -A -N -N -I -N -G,

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Up. That is to say, for those of you that are men who are listening, or wives who have men that you'd like to have go, whether it's church, home, or culture, how to be masculine.

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Is the caveman model the right model? Is the kind of wussy, effeminate backseat driver, is that the model?

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What is the model? Wild at heart model, promise keepers model, superstar sports athlete model, what is the model for being a godly man, a man who follows

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Christ Jesus and leads his family, leads in the church, and leads in the culture? My brother is the speaker,

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Pat Ebendroth, and you can find him at omahabiblechurch .org. March 27th,

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March 27th, so we're almost to that date, March 27th, at 8 a .m.

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there's going to be a breakfast, about 8 .30, 8 .45, we'll start the conference. Three sessions. There's going to be a

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Sunday session as well for Sunday school, but if you've got a good church already, then you can just listen to that online.

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$5, Manning Up Conference, Pat Ebenroth, $5, bbchurch .org, you can register there, or you can register at info at nocompromiseradio .com.

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You can probably go to the PayPal donation link on the No Compromise website, pay five bucks there, make a copy of that, and just come on in and we'll see you.

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If you don't pay the five bucks early and you just want to show up at the door, show up at 8 .30, $5 for the conference, no breakfast.

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So, Manning Up, I dare you to attend. Now let's talk a little bit about depression.

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Sometimes we talked, or last time we talked rather, about wrong responses to bad things that happen in your life which cycle unto depression.

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For instance, we talked about if there's some kind of sickness in the family or some kind of death in the family, if you respond to something improperly, it can lead to the cycle of depression.

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And I just want you to know that there was a lady at our church, her name was Joyce, and she died,

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I think it was about two years ago, and I was healthcare proxy for Joyce. That is,

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I was the one to decide, by her request, when to pull the plug, what to do, how to go about doing some of those life care issues, and so I was at the top of the list for her to have her relatives notified when something was going on.

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And so we have the hospice care group that, it was actually

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Evercare group, Evercare Hospice, and they called me one day and said, we're sorry to inform you, they thought

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I was probably next of kin, sorry to inform you that Joyce has died. I thought, oh man, that's too bad,

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Joyce has died, and thank you for calling, and you begin to go through all the issues of what to do and grief and everything else.

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Five minutes later, maybe ten minutes later, I get another phone call, hi, this is Evercare Hospice group, and sorry, we had her on the wrong list, she's still alive.

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And we're going to put her on hospice, and then she got moved over to this other kind of care, and it was just one

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Excel spreadsheet to the next, and something got mixed up in the mess of the whole thing, and she is still alive.

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And so how do you respond to something like that? I'm sure if I would have responded improperly, then there would have been a cycle that could have really gone downhill.

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I did get a nice card that said, you know, please, we are apologizing, we're speaking to the supervisor, sorry about the error, etc.

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And so everybody makes mistakes, and we just learn from our mistakes. The point is not what happens if you make a mistake and how do you get over that, it's if somebody does something to you, how do you respond to that very issue?

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There's a righteous response and an unrighteous response. So today as we talk about depression, when something bad happens, there's some kind of issue in your life, your response to that issue is key.

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So, the next thing I'd like to talk about in our two -part discussion on depression is how to overcome depression.

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Last time we looked at definitions of depression in the DSM -IV, so maybe biblical definitions, secular definitions.

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We talked about what J. Adams said, we talked about a little bit what Ed Welch said, we looked at Psalm 38, and we looked at a variety of those issues to lay the groundwork for our biblical definitions and understanding of depression.

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Now I want to move more towards not mismanaging trials, not stopping activity, but how to overcome depression, what to do instead of just analyzing the behavior.

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Frankly, psychologists and psychiatric folks can analyze behavior, but only the

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Spirit of God can transform behavior. That is to say, what I'm going to tell you now is this is for the believer, as the

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Spirit of God works in the believer's life. I'm not after behavior modification, I'm after godliness and sanctification that stems out of the substitutionary atonement of Christ Jesus and his resurrection.

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So how to overcome depression? If this is the first one you're listening to, you should go back to last week and listen to that first.

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Unless you're in the car, I guess you can't do that. Overcoming depression. Let me give you a few things that aren't the answer, the ultimate answers for depression.

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Number one, something that's not the answer. Psychotropic drugs are not the answer for the

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Christian. Now once again, if you're taking these drugs, I am not telling you to stop.

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I would tell you at the maximum to go talk to your doctor, to say, I'm curious about getting off these drugs, how can you help me?

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Because some need to be weaned off, you can't go cold turkey, some kind of physiological issues.

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So I am not saying to stop. I'm saying, as you think through this issue, is this a difference maker?

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Do these help me? Do these answer my question on how to live a more godly life?

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So what one man said, psychotropic medications do somehow change brain function. They do alter a person's thinking, feeling, and behaving.

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They can stop disorganized thinking, hallucinations, and the formation of delusions. They can make people stop having temper tantrums.

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They are also fully capable of making feelings like guilt, shame, sadness, and worry go away.

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Thus, among some effects that might be considered at times necessary or even desirable, psychotropic medications can also dissolve the conscience of man and blunt the feelings and thoughts that can arise when one is under conviction of sin.

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We therefore have the psychopharmacological power to impair the effect of the law that is written on the heart of every man.

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As such, we have the power to impair its God -given purpose, that being to draw rebellious men to Him via conviction of sin and our lost state.

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Even among those in whom the Holy Spirit dwells, the convicting and guiding effects of that Spirit can be impaired insofar as it accomplishes its purpose by causing us to experience uncomfortable thoughts or feelings.

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This is surely the most important aspect of psychopharmacology that Christians fail to appreciate.

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Did you understand that? Did you get that? There's a lot of big polysyllabic words there.

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But drugs can affect you, and they can affect you as a Christian in an adverse way.

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I'm not talking about if you've got a thyroid issue that you ought not to take some thyroid medicine.

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But I am saying that if you are depressed, the ultimate answer—after all, we're

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Christians, aren't we ?—the ultimate answer is not found in medicine.

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Remember, we live in a society that disease -ifies almost everything. One man called it the disease -ification of America.

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And so we have some kind of behavior that we don't like, and then we call it a disease.

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And then you give medicine for the disease. If you have cancer, you have to have some kind of chemo medicine.

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And so it works out well in the minds of psychologists and psychiatric folks. We have a disease, now we have medicine.

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And then we think we've got a real biological problem, and we've got a real biological cure.

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One man said the truth is that psychotropic drugs are more akin to aspirin and its effect on fever than to penicillin and its effect on bacteria.

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That's wise. The fact that Ritalin slows down a fidgety boy is in no way, in no way means that he has a disease called

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ADD. It will slow down any boy. If Christians had a better appreciation of the weak science underpinning modern psychiatry and its medications, if they understood counseling for what

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Scripture says it ought to be, and if they took time to consider the serious theological implications of the current use of psychotropic medications, then they would come to view such medications as a last resort and not the first resort.

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And I believe that statement. I believe that we by default want easy, we're lazy, and off we go.

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We have a disease, they say it's a disease, DSM -IV says it's a disease, and so now if you have a disease, you need to have a medical cure, and here is the medicine.

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First resort. No. This writer goes on to say, it is to say that if believers in their churches were doing what they should be doing to really disciple one another, the need for such medications would be vastly obviated, even if not completely eliminated.

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Medication, friends, cannot change your heart. Medication cannot decrease sin.

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Medication cannot increase your faith. Medication cannot increase your obedience.

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You need your feelings. You need your emotions. You need those things.

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You don't need to drug them. Drugs. Ask your doctor this.

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If you're on medication for depression now, go to your doctor and say, I'm struggling with depression and some of these issues, what's my hope?

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Will I ever get off these drugs? Will I ever be able to be cured? These drugs don't seem to be working as often as they used to.

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I tell you, I'd love to be proven wrong. Your doctor, most doctors rather, would probably say that you need to change your dose, you need to change your drug, but I don't think they're going to say you're going to be free from these drugs.

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That's the great thing about biblical counseling. There's hope for the repentant. There's hope for a repentant person.

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There is a real cure. If you try to have a solution -oriented philosophy that says, relieve the feelings, relieve the feelings with some kind of drugs, you are just getting rid of the symptoms and not dealing with the core issue.

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So I think that when you have something like an anxiety quote -unquote disorder or depression, or you have some kind of bipolar, the first way for a

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Christian, if you're an unbeliever and you're one of those things, then you can basically do whatever you want because you're an enemy of God already and you've got a bigger problem, and that is

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God is angry with the wicked every day. You've got a bigger problem and you need the shelter of Christ Jesus' life, death, and resurrection to shelter you from the wrath of God that is already going to be poured out on you, and His wrath of God is already poured out now, and then there'll be end times judgment later.

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You've got a bigger problem. But if you're a Christian and you want your life transformed, is the Bible sufficient for transforming a

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Christian? Is the Spirit of God, is He, the Spirit of God, sufficient for everything you need in life and in godliness?

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One of the other things that you ought not to do is to say, I'm going to do psychology only.

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I'm going to go to a man -centered psychologist and talk through issues. Drugs aren't the ultimate issue, the ultimate solution.

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Psychology, it isn't the great Savior that it is claimed to be.

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Actually, did you know, the American Journal of Psychiatry, there was a researcher named

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John Greist, and he presented a study showing that depressed people treated by computerized questions and answers improved just as much as those who consulted a human therapist.

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So why waste all your time and money on a psychologist? And number three, maybe the most dangerous cocktail of all, what

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I don't think the solution is, is to mix both Bible and psychology. That's a very dangerous mixing.

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J. Adams said, in my opinion, advocating, allowing, and practicing psychiatric and psychoanalytical dogmas within the church is every bit as pagan and heretical, therefore perilous, as propagating the teachings of some of the most bizarre cults.

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The only vital difference is that the cults are less dangerous because their errors are more identifiable.

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So be careful when it comes to Christian integration, integrating the Bible with psychology.

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Integrating the Bible with psychology is not a good thing. So if medicine is not the ultimate answer, psychology is not the ultimate answer, integration is not the ultimate answer, what is the answer?

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We know the answer is a complete reliance and trust in God's goodness, in His Word, in His promises, and in His people.

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That's exactly right. You don't need a professional to help you with your problems.

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That's just an offshoot of some kind of gnostic behavior. We have the inside knowledge, and you don't.

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Paul said, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.

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My name is Mike Abendroth, this is No Compromise Radio. I'm talking about depression and how to overcome it. We are sanctified by truth,

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Jesus said, thy word is truth. How do you help people who have depression?

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How do you give them hope? As a matter of fact, if you're a good Bible counselor and discipler, you'll give them something that most shrinks won't give, and that is hope.

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If you do God's business, God's way, God's sanctification, God's way, there is hope for you.

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You don't have to be this way the rest of your life. How great is that? And again, if you've got depression, first thing you should do is go get yourself a physical checkup to see if there's an organic reason, heart and thyroid, something that's going on that you need to have tested.

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And so, what do we do? I'm going to use a little acronym called DOWN. If you have depression, here is my acronym,

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D -O -W -N, DOWN, to help you not be depressed any longer.

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D in DOWN, direct the person to the word and with the word.

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Teach them the Bible. So let's look at the Bible. Direct the person who's depressed to the word.

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Teach them the Bible. And you say, well, I'm no great counselor. Do you know if you're a Christian, you are equipped and adequate to counsel, to help people who have depression?

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Romans 15, 14, and concerning you, my brethren, I myself also am convinced that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, and able also to admonish one another, to put sense into, to counsel.

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You are able to speak the truth in love. And that's what best friends do. That's what friends do.

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That's what people who love one another do. Faithful are the wounds of a friend, Proverbs 27.

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Seven, did you know it is God's way that if someone is depressed, for you to come alongside of them and serve them,

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Galatians 6. If any man's caught in a trespass, you who are spiritual, restore such a one in the spirit of gentleness, each one looking to yourself, lest you too be tempted.

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Bear one another's burdens and thus fulfill the law of Christ. Label sin as sin.

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Direct the person to say, what I do improperly grants me the feelings of what

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I've done. And these aren't feelings of joy and peace. These are feelings of feeling down and depression.

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There is hope for you when you confess sin and repent of it.

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Gowan said, whenever someone walks in my study and says, I'm depressed, I understand that though they generally at that moment do not say that the sad and hopeless emotions are merely symptoms of a deeper cause.

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We call this a presentation problem. They want to feel better, to be happy again. I can do one of three things for them.

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The counseling context then is not magic. I do not have a magic wand or a particular incantation

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I can utter to make problems disappear. It is primarily a context in which education in biblical principles with its corresponding practical application can occur.

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As an individual learns to think biblically about problems and about life in general, he grows in his ability to sort through the issues and move toward the appropriate godly solution.

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And so, here we have the first D, and that D is direct them to the

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Word and tell them Proverbs 29, 18, happy is he who keeps the law.

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If you do the right thing, you'll be happy. If you obey God, he grants you the fruit of doing the right thing, and you feel good.

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Direct this person to say, we live in such a feeling -oriented society that people don't even say, what do you think about that anymore?

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They say, what do you feel about that? And tell them that feelings come and feelings go and feelings are deceiving.

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My warrant is the Word of God, not else is worth believing. Martin Luther. Tell them that if you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up?

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Genesis 4, 7. Just like Cain, if you do the right thing, you're going to feel happy.

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I love the whole as -if illustration I've given before on this show, and you want to divorce your husband and then live as if you really love him and that'll really teach him a lesson at the end when you file for divorce.

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By the end of that three -month test period, you end up really loving him because you've loved him with obedient love to God, and then your husband you've loved sacrificially, and the feelings follow.

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They are the caboose. Living as if you love him will end up making you love him.

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Tell them with the Word of God about the lies of the enemy and God's truth, that their circumstances and situations might have an influence on them, but they are not a helpless victim.

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They are responsible, that they are a sinful person, and that they worship their own selves and that they become idolatrous, and then that causes bad feelings.

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Tell them that their trials and their temptations are not unique. They're not in some category by themselves.

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Tell them that if they behave in unbiblical ways, they're going to feel bad.

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And that leads me to number two, which is the O, down, D, direct the person to the

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Word, O, obedience should be encouraged. John 13, 17, now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.

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If you look at the Word of God, James 1 .25, and you stare at it and look at it and don't forget it, but do it, you will be blessed in what you do.

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You will be happy and it will be well with you if you walk with the Lord and fear him,

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Psalm 1 .28. Encourage people to do that. Tell them it's, even if they've fallen,

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Proverbs 24 .16, for a righteous man falls seven times and rises again, and encourage obedience, obey with them.

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That's what the number three is, D -O -W -N, we come to the W, with. Do things with the person.

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You come alongside, like the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, and you come alongside and say, let's get to work.

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One of the things that depressed people need to do more than anything else is to work in gospel ministry, serving other people and getting joy out of that.

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It's time to get busy, 1 Thessalonians 5 .14, we urge you, brethren, admonish the unruly, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with all men.

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And then as you help these people and you work with them, and they are thinking, I can't, you tell them, yes, you can, you just haven't learned how yet.

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I'm lonely, well, you're choosing to be alone, here's the body of Christ to come and help you.

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Well, I don't feel like working, well, let's work anyway, even though we don't feel like it. And you can be with them and you can help them with regular confession of sin, faithfulness and prayer, diligence for the

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Word of God and its study, and you can teach them, well, I have a habit, and that habit that I've gotten myself into is going to be hard to get out, but I need for six weeks to do the right thing to establish the new habit.

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And then number four, N, no to self and yes to others, which is pretty much the same thing as the last one, no to self and yes to others.

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My most down days used to be January 1st when the college football games were on all day, the bowl games, and I would watch from 10 o 'clock in the morning until about 10 o 'clock at night, 12 hours, and I felt horrible at the end.

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I felt down, depressed, moody, I hadn't accomplished anything except sat there in front of a dumb TV, and only a few of those years,

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Nebraska won the championship. And so, what a waste of time, and I felt bad.

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The focus was on myself. You want to teach the people to say no to self, death to self, because that is a divine reality, dead to sins, alive to Christ.

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Lloyd -Jones says, we are so subjective, and we live in this unhealthy psychological generation that starts with man and ends with man.

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Most of our troubles are due to that. Lloyd -Jones believed that you're in constant state of depression and defeat because you are run by your emotions.

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If you are depressed, you need to get Martin Lloyd -Jones' book, Spiritual Depression. David Martin Lloyd -Jones,

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Spiritual Depression, an all -time classic written by a medical doctor that will really encourage you, and it will help you get your focus away from yourself and onto God.

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If you are down, and you are depressed, and you feel emotionally numb, there's hope for you.

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And that hope is not found in a little pill. That hope is not found by some kind of man -centered psychology.

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That hope is found in the Word of God and in His church. And we would love to talk to you, even at Bethlehem Bible Church, if you've got an issue and you think there's no help for you, nobody understands, nobody can help you, you need to call your doctor.

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Make sure you do what he says, and don't do anything funny, and just stop taking all your drugs. But you need to call your doctor and work with him, and then we would love to give you biblical advice from the

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Word, and you can be with David. Restore to me the joy of my salvation. Let me hear joy and gladness,

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Psalm 51. God bless you. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church, firmly committed to unleashing the life -transforming power of God's Word through verse -by -verse exposition of the sacred text.

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Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston.

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You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.